Diary of a Hapless Fan Fiction Writer
by The Ingenue's Shadow
Summary: A this-could-happen-to-you! story. When the narrator starts out, she is a normal person, but by the end she will fall to the level of what everyone here is: a hapless fan fiction writer.
1. Phase One

Diary of a Hapless Fan Fiction Writer  
  
Phase 1:  
  
* Today I got bored. I've watched LOTR like five hundred times and guess what? It's still the same! The Return of the King isn't coming out for almost a whole year, it seems, and honestly, I don't think that Viggo Mortenson is capable of playing a king - like role. It's too much of a stress for his character. He is *incredibly* sexy, though! He's my favorite, to be perfectly honest. I know he's like, forty-something and has a kid my age, but he is just so *sexy*!  
  
Anyway, I got bored. So I invited my friend Robyn over for a sleepover. I got her addicted to LOTR when I dragged her to The Two Towers and she started asking "Maggie, where's FRODO?" even when he was in the scene. Frodo! Honestly, Frodo! Yech!  
  
We stayed up until three in the morning weaving stories together for one another about our dream guys from LOTR. I had the most fun with this, especially since we kept inwardly insulting the other's hero. Then we went to bed. I told Robyn that for fun I would write up one of the fantasies we had thought up and email it to her later. I had no idea . . .  
  
* Today I got bored again. It's winter break, and there is NOTHING TO DO! I was beginning to think that I should have gone to New Hampshire like I had been offered. Unable to think of nothing else to do, I made myself a sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly, so there.  
  
As I ate my sandwich, I thought of the promise I had made to Robyn. It sounded like a good idea at the time, and I was bored, so I sat down at my computer. However, when I tried to remember some of the unfinished stories we had made up, the only one that could come to mind was a particularly insightful one Robyn had invented. I logged onto hotmail, went to "compose," and put "me" in the "To:" box, unsure that I would be sending this to Robyn, or anyone else, for that matter.  
  
As I typed, I used code names. Aragorn was "Elessar" (poor code name, I know, but I couldn't think of anything better), Gandalf was "grey-white" (dorky, I know), Boromir was "Boro" (hmm I wonder who that could be!), Gimli was "the dirty mouth" (from the extended version of the "Fellowship." Robyn and I found Gimli's profanity more entertaining than you can imagine) and Legolas was "Rock" (the book "Love, A User's Guide," had a character who was a hot movie star named Orlando Rock. All through reading it, I thought of Orlando Bloom. You do the math).  
  
The hobbits were given most strange code names. Frodo was "Underhill." Hmm I wonder who'd be able to guess that? Merry and Pippin's code names were derived from their full names Tolkien gave them, so Merry was "Adoc" (Meriadoc) and Pippin was "Grin" (Peregrin). Coincidently, the same went for Sam (he became "Wise"). I'm not sure why I thought I needed a code name for Sam, because Sam is such a normal name, but I'm only telling it like it is.  
  
My "story" started out as a series of events, just listed in one long sentence because I was trying to figure out the ending. That had been my original purpose, but before long I started adding in specific details. Where people were. What they looked like. What they thought about things. Here is exactly how I started typing it:  
  
"stick w/the elf princess w/broken heart thing, hidden away in moria, fellowship travels through, elassar tries to take the ring by sliting underhill's throat while he sleeps. rock is on watch but doesn't see. ep sees and before he can kill underhill she aims an arrow at his heart. she never gets to shoot it though, for while rock did not see elassar he sees the ep and shoots her. rock, boro and elassar go up the rocks to investigate who tried to kill elassar (he's better now) and find the ep. she is unconciouss and rock's arrow went straight to her heart. rock, boro and elassar try and decide what to do with her. elassar does not inform them why she was trying to kill him. he keeps quiet but feels really guilty."  
  
All one paragraph and no capitalization. I had no idea what I'd gotten myself into. It was like that lambchop song, "this is the song that never ends," because I didn't realize at that point that my innocent "story" would turn into a 94-page fan fiction. 


	2. Phase Two

Phase 2: A Growing Desire  
  
* Okay, so after I had gotten down to details like adjectives and colors, I (finally) transferred the story to Microsoft Word. It was quite insane by this point. The Elvish princess (ep) so far had within the fellowship admirers (all of the hobbits, save Sam), a best friend (the ever popular Boromir), and a boyfriend (my hero Aragorn of course). Oh, and someone trying to murder her . . . still Legolas.  
  
You see, it really bothers me how much Orlando Bloom is hero- worshiped, so when I gave him actions I made them particularly malicious. You remember of course how he originally shot her to "save" Aragorn, and he remained convinced of her guilt past that time. He almost threw her off the Bridge of Kazad-Dun and later tried to kill her at night when no one else was awake. The idea thrilled me beyond all else.  
  
I looked up at my screen for a minute, and saw for the first time that I was at five pages. Five pages! Having never written more than four in my life save a paper on Harriet Tubman, this enthused me to make a few changes.  
  
#1: I did the almost-permanent by pressing "save" on my computer. I called the document "Dream" because that was what it had started out as and I was still convincing myself that that was all it was.  
  
#2: I did a little furniture re-arranging. Our TV room is made up of four things: a computer table, a chair, a television and a couch. Two doors that can open up wide are the entrance, but you can go through the connecting closet if you (for some really strange reason) don't plan on using the doors. I moved the television into our dining room, with the cords going under the closed double doors and pushed the couch out as well, telling my little brother the TV addict that he could watch from the dining room. This left our TV room exclusively for computer and chair use, and I am really the only one who uses it anyway. The TV blocked my way in and out of the room, so I used the connecting closet.  
  
#3: I refused to turn on the lights. I adored the eerie blue glow my computer gave off throughout the small room, and would sit on the floor for minutes at a time, replaying everything I had written so far and trying to think up more but getting lost in the fantasy world someone else had created.  
  
I began to plan ahead. Tried to think of what-would-come-next. It turned into a full-fledged and dangerous soap opera. The Elvish princess (undoubtedly me) was still unconscious. By the time she was able to stay awake for extended periods of time, it was decided that she had (no!) amnesia. She could not remember who she was or why she had tried to kill Aragorn. By the time she did remember, I realized that I was once more conflict-less and so Aragorn (poor guy, I really did him in) asked Legolas to kill the princess.  
  
What I was thinking, I do not know. I drew out a long explanation, mainly to convince myself of why this was. I started doing that with everything, but I kept writing. By the end of the day, I was nine pages in. Nine pages that should have been left behind.  
  
* Today at church, I told anyone who had listen that I wrote a nine-page (gasp!) story, and that I was not done. Everyone seemed at least mildly impressed, I'm not sure why now but like I said, this isn't why, this is just what happened. So be it.  
  
* When I told my friend Willie at school today, still "forgetting" to mention the fact that I had only created one of my own characters, he told me it was "a good start." I'm up to 13 pages now, insane and, yes! Mad, yes! I know!  
  
It became all I wanted to think about. Fortunately, it wasn't yet all I *could* think about, but it was all I wanted to. I ignored my homework and went straight into what I had practically turned into a frigidarium.  
  
The excuse I gave myself for what I began to call "Tolkiens" (near- death experiences which somehow miraculously turn out to leave the person unharmed) was that it was a parody of Tolkien, how he did the same thing quite a few times. Have you ever noticed how 50% of the six books in the LOTR trilogy end in a hobbit losing consciousness?  
  
In the second one, Frodo is unconscious after crossing the river and the book ends. In the fourth one, Sam knocks himself against that door trying to run through it and passes out, once more just before the ending of the book and the entire Two Towers. In the fifth one, Pippin gets fallen on by that troll and, yes! is knocked out just before Tolkien wraps up book five. See what I mean?  
  
So I did the same thing. She almost died the various times Legolas tried to kill her (before they, also, became an item), and then after valiantly trying to save him in battle, and countless other times. It gave me what I wanted: conflict and worry. I would speed up my typing, having just snarfed down some ice cream and therefore shaking so badly from the cold that I was typing hysterically. 


End file.
